Katharine
Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was an American songwriter. She
is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem "America the
Beautiful". She popularized "Mrs. Santa Claus" through her poem Goody Santa
Claus on a Sleigh Ride (1889).

Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the daughter of Congregational
pastor William Bates and his wife, Cornelia Frances Lee. She graduated from
Needham High School in 1872, from Newton High School in 1875,[1]
and from Wellesley College with a B.A. in 1880. She taught at Natick High
School during 1880–81 and at Dana Hall School from 1885 until 1889. She
returned to Wellesley as an instructor, then an associate professor 1891–93
when she was awarded an M.A. and became full professor of English literature.
She studied at Oxford University during 1890–91.[2]
While teaching at Wellesley, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi
Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in
history and politics.

Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and
children's books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus
on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other Verses for
Children (1889).

She contributed regularly to periodicals, sometimes under the pseudonym
James Lincoln, including Atlantic Monthly, The Congregationalist,
Boston Evening Transcript, Christian Century, Contemporary
Verse, Lippincott's and Delineator.[3]

A lifelong, active Republican, Bates broke with the party to endorse
Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis in 1924 because of Republican
opposition to American participation in the League of Nations. She said:
"Though born and bred in the Republican camp, I cannot bear their betrayal of
Mr. Wilson and their rejection of the League of Nations, our one hope of peace
on earth."[4]

Bates never married. In 1910, when a colleague described "free-flying
spinsters" as "fringe on the garment of life", Bates answered: "I always
thought the fringe had the best of it. I don't think I mind not being woven
in."[5]

Bates lived in Wellesley with
Katharine Coman,
who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley
College School Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five
years until Coman's death in 1915.[7]
In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, a
collection of poems written "to or about my Friend" Katharine Coman, some of
which had been published in Coman's lifetime.[8]

Some describe the couple as intimate lesbian partners,[9]
citing as an example Bates' 1891 letter to Coman: "It was never very possible
to leave Wellesley [for good], because so many love-anchors held me there, and
it seemed least of all possible when I had just found the long-desired way to
your dearest heart...Of course I want to come to you, very much as I want to
come to Heaven."[10]
Others contest the use of the term lesbian to describe such a "Boston
marriage". Writes one: "We cannot say with certainty what sexual connotations
these relationships conveyed. We do know that these relationships were deeply
intellectual; they fostered verbal and physical expressions of love."[11]

Katherine Lee Bates House, Falmouth, MA

Oak Grove Cemetery, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540

Oak Grove Cemetery, Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540

Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on September 28, 1929, and is
buried in Oak Grove Cemetery at Falmouth.[6]